Agreement Reached in WZO, Reform Blast Eretz Hakodesh slate

An agreement has been reached in the appointment of the major portfolios and positions of influence within the World Zionist Organization, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael -Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF), and Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal. The agreement leans heavily in favor of the right-wing, religious-Zionist, and ultra-Orthodox parties, but it has been tempered somewhat from the original deal that drew so much fire from the center-left, progressive Jewish bloc. Crucially, the Yesh Atid Party will take control of the powerful Finance Committee within KKL which controls its extremely large budgets, unlike in the original agreement in which the Likud controlled that position. And the chairmanship of the KKL Education Committee will no longer be exclusively controlled by the ultra-Orthodox Eretz Hakodesh Party as stipulated in the original agreement, but will now be shared on a rotational basis with Blue and White. read more at Jpost.

 The progressive reform movement leader went on to call out the Eretz Hakodesh slate "Let us be clear: Eretz Hakodesh is a party that did not come to build the Zionist organization, but to diminish it. If pragmatic Zionist ideals are to survive, and if a Zionist organization in some form is to endure, the

efforts of Eretz Hakodesh to dismiss all forms of Judaism and Zionism but its own must be repelled. Progressive and centrist Zionist movements are prepared to wage this battle, but its outcome is far from certain".

 And this brings us to Eretz Hakodesh, a new American Zionist party. It is affiliated with Degel Hatorah, a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) party represented in Israel’s Knesset. In this year’s Zionist elections, the Reform movement’s party again placed first, but Eretz Hakodesh placed third, an impressive showing for a new group. Its numbers were sufficient to provide the right-wing and Orthodox bloc with a very narrow majority at the Congress.

Degel Hatorah’s decision to permit an American affiliate to compete in Zionist elections was interesting on many levels. Ten years ago, when the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party decided to participate in the Congress, Degel Hatorah’s newspaper viciously attacked them. Like most groups in the ultra-Orthodox world, Degel Hatorah was reluctant to identify itself in an official way as “Zionist.” Furthermore, it noted that while Shas claimed to be countering Reform Judaism, it was actually granting legitimacy to the non-Orthodox streams by joining an organization in which Reform and Conservative Jews were members.

Nonetheless, Reform and Conservative leaders hoped that the creation of Eretz Hakodesh might signify a change of direction in the haredi world. When Reform Judaism had decided to affiliate with the Zionist movement in the 1970s, it had been welcomed by Orthodox representatives. Why then should Reform leaders not welcome Eretz Hakodesh into the Zionist fold? If it was ready to define itself as Zionist, sit around the WZO table, cooperate with all Zionist factions and accept the cooperative culture of working together for Israel, why not?

BUT OF COURSE, it was hopelessly naive to think that this was the intention.

And sure enough, when Eretz Hakodesh’s seats gave the majority to right-wing and Orthodox groups, the party and its allies immediately broke with Zionist tradition, doing the exact opposite of what left-wing groups had done for 70 years. Instead of creating a broad coalition of Right and Left, and a fair distribution of Zionist tasks, they reserved all major responsibilities for themselves. Center, Left, Reform and Conservative groups were offered marginal roles. Instead of working for the common Zionist good, the new party and Likud led the way in punishing anyone not identified with its camp. They offered not Zionism but triumphalism. They demonstrated that in their eyes, Jewish peoplehood means their people and nobody else, and the leader of Eretz Hakodesh poured out his contempt for his Zionist partners sitting across the table.

And they had the chutzpah to do all of this with a bare majority of seven votes out of 521 delegates.

The good news is that this affront to Zionist ideals and long-established WZO practice did not stand. Stunned and appalled, Reform and Conservative leaders launched a massive lobbying campaign. Reaching out to mainstream Zionist and Jewish groups throughout the Diaspora, they appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block the proposed deal. Hadassah, B’nai Brith International and Jewish Federations in North America were among those who joined in the lobbying effort.

Netanyahu understood that a Zionist movement intended to foster ties between Israel and Diaspora Jews could not survive if it sent a message to the moderate majority of the Jewish world that they are not wanted in Zionist ranks.

The result? With prodding from the prime minister, the right-wing/Orthodox/haredi grouping that had formulated the initial deal came up with a modestly improved arrangement that was more or less satisfactory to all parties.

What happens now? A modicum of Zionist unity has been re-created, and the WZO is back in business. However, the problem is that it is difficult to have any confidence that the deal just reached, barely satisfactory as it is, will be honored by the new right-wing leadership. The haredim, we now know, have no interest whatever in abiding by the rules of the Zionist game. They have no interest in sitting in on the Jewish conversation where all views are welcome and legitimacy is extended to all. They have no desire to preserve whatever modest standing the WZO retains as a catalyst for Jewish unity and for broad support of consensus Zionism. And, in our deeply polarized Jewish world, their allies on the Right will probably be no better.

Reform, Conservative, and mainstream Zionists do not intend to back away from this fight. They believe that the deeply flawed WZO is still worth preserving, and that the Jewish people still need a Zionist structure that includes us all. They think that the struggle to revive and reform the WZO is worth the effort. Whether it can actually be done in the next five years, or ever, is anyone’s guess. Jpost